With joy,
tears retreating,
but laughter beating,
pulsing,
pounding,
refusing to stop.
Spinning, kicking,
restless ticking,
tickling my veins,
love’s rhythm
clicking, sticking,
refusing to fade.
With joy,
shouting, leaping,
flying high,
my feet, dancing,
soaring in the sky.
My soul,
fanning flames
once fiercely burning,
no longer holding tears
I taught myself to bury.
But tears, once hiding
deep where pride resides,
no longer have room to stay,
no corners left to divide.
With joy
I'm breaking free,
riding waves,
soaring high,
with you
now by my side.
Finding My Beat
How a simple workshop trick helped me bring rhythm to my poetry
An earlier version of this poem was dry. Flat. It lacked spirit, momentum, breath. And I didn’t want to fix it by piling on metaphors or big feelings—I wanted to give it a pulse.
What I felt it needed first was rhythm. So I asked myself: How do I make this move?
I decided to try a technique I’d learned in a writing workshop: relying on the gerund.
Yep. The humble -ing form. Spinning. Kicking. Fanning. Soaring.
At first glance, using gerunds might seem lazy—as if you’re just stringing together a list of actions. But in poetry, gerunds can do something magical: they keep the energy in motion. They suspend the moment. They carry the reader forward without resolution, just like joy does. You’re not simply dancing—you’re dancing, present-tense and alive, and the movement hasn’t stopped.
Gerunds also act like rhythm anchors. Poets like Walt Whitman, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Jericho Brown have used gerunds to propel lines forward and build momentum across stanzas. Whitman’s catalogues, for example, often hinge on a series of present participles, turning long poems into waves of motion. Brooks layered them into tight, rhythmic lines to create a punchy, urban cadence. And Brown uses them to build rising energy in lyrical, often spiritual arcs.
In With Joy, once I let the gerunds in, the poem started to move. It pulsed. It pounded. The joy wasn’t just described—it was doing something. And in the process, so was I.
So, no—it’s not lazy. It’s deliberate.
Try it: pick one emotion. Then let it move.
Challenge:
Write a short poem (10 lines or less) using at least three gerunds to build rhythm and momentum. Don’t just describe a feeling—put it in motion. Let your verbs carry the weight.
